Fourway Farm,
September 13, 1934.

Dear Ab.,

It gives me great pleasure to know that you have won fifty pounds in a certain consultation.

That's great news. But it don't give me quite so much pleasure to know that you are in the habit of dribbling your money away on long shots like that.

I think I am now beginning to understand why you find it a bit hard for a single man to live on three quid a week.

If I was you, Ab., I would cut out the gamblin until I had a bit of loose money to play with. And then when I had a bit of loose money what wasent working I would hurry up and shove it into Commonwealth Stock or some wild gamble like that and then pretend I forgot I had it.

Sich has been the fambly habit of the Jameses since time in memorium.

But I am beginning to think that your Ma is right when she argues that you don't get much of your character from the James side of the fambly.

If that wasent so I dont think you would be paying any heed to that flash new friend of yours. This here Mister Claud le Slosh, the finanseer what you met at a party seems a bit too good to be true.

You tell me he is advising you to put your fifty quid in the Golconda Gold, Timber, Tin and Radium Development Company Limited if which he is the Managing Drictor, and dividends will be 30 per cent.

Just fancy that now.

Well, Ab., it has always been the James habit to chew these sort of things over a bit before finaly loosening up on your end of a wad of reel money. Chewing things over habitual in flash company may not be good manners in your set, but believe me it is good bisness.

In fack, I been chewing this over a bit on me own account so I took the liberty of writing down to me old friend Bill Sleath, the lawyer asking him to get a bit of a line on this here Mister le Slosh of yours.

Bill aint found out very much, only some odd and intresting bits about 18 munce for false pretenses in South Aus. and 2 year for passing crook checks in Noo South and another little slab or jurance vile for conspiracy in Tassie.

I know these is nothing but mere piccaloes in the life of a great financeer, but seems to me. Ah, your flash friend Mister Le Slosh is a bit careless at times. So if I was you I would just keep on chewing until he got fair sick at the sight of you and went and found someone else to let in on the ground floor of his great interprize.

Very often the trouble about this getting in on ground floors is that sometimes a fella finds he has got into the basement by mistake with all the doors locked.

So chew it over, Ab.

But please yourself. It's your fifty quid -- for the present.

Well Ab, I am glad to note that you are taking a keen interst in politics still. But I wouldent be so gloomy if I was you about the state of politics in your own country. Our Australian politics as politics is not such bad politics after all, is a man makes a few comparisons.

Supposing, frinstance, you woke up and opened your paper some morning and found that Joe Lyons had hired Kingsford Smith's and a few other fast planes and flew round the country in the night bumping off Jim Scullin and Jack Lang and Jock Garden and Jack Barnes and the Little Doctor and a few others what was annoying him politically also killing incidental a few of their female relations through a bit of careless shooting.

Things like that would be apt to make a man a bit peevish about his country's politics. But thank God we can manidge our public affairs without guns up to now.

So calm down, Ab, calm down a bit.

Things is fairsh at home by and large, and we ought to get off enough crop this year to pay some of the intrest on the morgage. So times is looking up.

Your Ma and brother Joe is tip top.

Love from all at home,

Your aff. father,
JAS. JAMES

P.S. Please send me check for 3 guineas which is Bill Sleath's fee for looking up your flash friend. J.J.

"Den"
Herald, 15 September 1934, p6